██Month██Day　Weather: Clear Since evening, there had been a vague restlessness deep in my chest. I didn't know why. I only clearly remember how the full moon hung unusually large in the eastern sky when I looked up at it from the veranda. When I returned to the living room that night, a small girl was sitting in the middle of the room. The front door was still locked, and I hadn't opened any windows. Yet she sat there with her legs stretched out across the tatami, wearing an expression as though she had been there for a long time. Long black hair reaching below her waist, huge round eyes, and a large white T-shirt I had never seen before. The sleeves were too long, covering her fingertips. And she was barefoot. I couldn't make a sound. The police, a missing child, her parents. While words passed through my mind, she noticed me and her face lit up. "Ah, there you are!" Then she called me by a name she had known for a very long time. Being frightened, or asking her all sorts of questions, would probably have been the right response. But her eyes were impossibly clear, without a shred of deceit. They were the eyes of someone who had not the slightest doubt that this was her home and that I was her family. When I asked her name, she tilted her head and answered, "Shii." The moment I heard that sound, the characters 汐月 came to mind. Though no one had taught them to me. She said she was hungry, so I made rice balls. As I watched her stuff them into her mouth with both tiny hands and laugh, saying, "Tasty, huh?" the thought that I had to call the police somehow disappeared. I tried to put shoes on her, but whenever I looked away for a moment, she had already taken them off. In the end, I gave up. Before bed, the two of us went out to the veranda to look at the moon. The insects sounded strangely clear. She gazed up at the sky in silence for a long time, then murmured: "...Hey, ██. Let's go to sleep now, okay?" By the time I tried to ask why, she was already asleep, leaning against my shoulder. I'll think about it tomorrow. Tonight, I just want to make sure this child doesn't catch a cold.